


Funny, but when you're near me...

by Chispas_and_broken_bindings



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, In The Mood For Love AU, Infidelity, Pandemic - Freeform, and a bunch of my favorite characters stuck in a building together for weeks/months, and falling in love, but also humor, mentions of past Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24705676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chispas_and_broken_bindings/pseuds/Chispas_and_broken_bindings
Summary: In the Mood for Love AUSeven years after a failed Northern rebellion, Sansa Hardyng and Jon Snow, neighbors with a shared history, navigate a pandemic sweeping Westeros as their significant others are away on a business trip.Supporting characters: Drunk poet Tyrion and his verrrry new girlfriend Shae; civil engineer Brienne, jazz musician Tormund, teenage Margaery and her sassy proprietress grandmother Olenna Tyrell, retired actress Myranda Royce, Asha Greyjoy and her couchsurfing brother Theon...and perhaps more...It's shameless self-indulgence at this point.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	1. Prologue

**8 Months Ago**

The last time Jon had seen Sansa Stark was the summer before she left for college in the Vale, three years before the rebellion. She had smelled like coconut sunscreen and cherry Chapstick and had been vibrantly snotty in the way only particularly attractive teenage girls can get away with, bickering constantly with Arya and doing her best to ignore pretty much everyone else for the two weeks they spent at the Stark's lake house.

When Jon got the invitation to complete his post-doctorate research at King's Landing College, it was Catelyn Stark who suggested he get in touch with her eldest daughter. After all, she had spent the last seven years in the city. Who better to help them track down an apartment in the famously expensive capital? The sophisticated woman who met him and Val at the café across the street from Highgarden apartments was a far cry from the haughty freckled teenager from his memories. Sansa Stark re-entered his life in a palette of cream and beige, her copper hair tamed to a shiny straight sheet and not a freckle to be found on her pale flawless skin.

"Jon Snow." She stood before him, offering a perfectly manicured hand. "You look just the same." He scratched at his brow.

"Well, _that's_ certainly a line," Val laughed, taking Sansa's hand in her own. "The last time you saw him, he was just a fresh-faced ingénue. I've seen pictures. You were a bonny lad before the beard and the falcon attack." She pinched his cheek.

"And, this is Val." Jon nodded as Sansa's smile widened, reaching her eyes. "Val, this is Sansa Stark."

"Hardyng."

"Right. A long overdue congratulations are in order. Sorry. I should have sent a card or a gift."

"Jon, you always were so painfully honest. You could have just played it off like the mixer got stopped by border patrol, and I'd be none the wiser. Its been almost ten years, anyhow." When Sansa turned to order a skinny decaf latte from the barista in the rapid-fire accentless clip of a city-dweller, Val arched an eyebrow at Jon in question, but he just shrugged. It had been a stupid thing to say. He knew she had married during the rebellion, behind enemy-lines. Without her family present.

"So, I know this isn't the most convenient commute to campus, but it’s a great neighborhood." Sansa explained as they stepped back outside, and Jon looked around in mild surprise. When she had e-mailed him to let him know a unit opened up in her own building, he had expected her to live in one of the glossy River Row condos or perhaps in one of the growing suburbs. Instead, they were in the heart of the old city, just a few blocks east of the infamous red light turned arts district, in a neighborhood of narrow cobbled streets, oddly angled walk-ups and the scent of late summer blooms creating a heady mixture with the less savory smells rising from the sewer grates.

Though it was late morning on a Tuesday, the sidewalks were filled with dog-walkers and couples and Jon was charmed by the colorful entryways and clotheslines crisscrossing the alleyways. There were more balconies than pedestrians, and more plants than balconies. It was nothing like the miles of untouched tundra that Jon and Val were used to, but if they must be surrounded by people, Jon figured this was about as cozy a neighborhood as they were likely to find.

"I don't understand how anything in this neighborhood is in our price range, to be honest."

"Well, it is rent-controlled." Sansa paused on the top step of the beautiful building she led them to. "Though, even then Olenna's normal asking price is a little higher than your budget."

"Sansa-"

"But…But…she's an old friend of Harry's aunt, Anya. Harry wanted to live down by the river, but one can't say 'No' to Lady Olenna Tyrell, once she's decided she'll have you. She's a fixture of the old guard arts elite. So, no pressure or anything, but if she likes you, you'll get the apartment for the price you need." At that moment, a flock of shrieking teenage girls came tumbling out of the tall bottle-green French doors, almost knocking them over.

"Sorry Sansa!" One split from the group with a mischievous grin. "Gigi and Aunty Myranda are inside playing Cyvasse and arguing about which of them had an affair with Oberyn Martell first. The door is open." They stepped into a cool, marble foyer with a wide, winding staircase leading to the apartments above and the smooth baritone of Dean Martin beckoning the trio into the opulence of the proprietress's quarters; a veritable treasure trove of collectibles spanning the entire mercantile history of the Narrow Sea. Jon's heart nearly stopped when a giant pearly cockatoo proved to be very much alive, perched between two ancient potted fig trees. 

"It never gets old. One day my Luthor is going to cause an actual heart-attack, and the thought alone sustains me the through even my bluest days. I do hope it’s the tax assessor." It took him a moment to find the source of the smoky voice amongst the mosaic of textiles, lamps and end tables. He found her at last in the corner; a wrinkled teacup of a woman wrapped in a terracotta silk shawl painted with peachy roses.

"Hello Mrs. Tyrell. This is the couple I told you about. Jon Snow is a professor at King's Landing College." Sansa silenced him with her hand, when he opened his mouth to correct her. He was a research fellow. "And this is his partner, Val, who I understand was until recently, a community organizer."

"First off, how many times do I need to tell you? Call me Olenna, sweet child. Secondly, you brought a rabble-rouser into my home?" She slid her pearl-shell reading glasses down the bridge of her nose, inspecting Val. "Ever been arrested?"

Val eyed Jon, before responding with a shrug. "Maybe. Once or twice."

"Oh, delightful." The elegant woman clapped, and Jon wondered how her brittle wrists didn't snap beneath the cascade of Bakelite bangles clinking together merrily. "Anyone with merit, needs to be on the wrong side of the law at least once in their life. Randa, remember when we were dragged down to the 11th precinct for inciting a riot?"

"Oh gods. Policemen can be so hysterical. I'd hardly call it a riot." From the a doorway emerged a buxom woman with small crimson lips and a mountain of gray- streaked brown curls piled atop her head.

"Well, those silly men in City Hall were trying to shut down the bars on the Street of the Sisters." She motioned for the three newcomers to find a seat, and Jon realized that they had moved on from introductions. "You know what kind of establishments I'm talking about, don't you?" Sansa nodded for them. "Well obviously we couldn't let that happen. Let them close the Sisters and next they'd take away the theaters and the concert halls and the salons, and then what's left?" The next hour passed pleasantly enough, listening to Olenna and Myranda's wild stories about intrigues with fading film stars and their decades-long patronage of the arts scene in King's Landing. Jon and Val didn't have to answer anything remotely resembling a typical tenant interview. When the grandfather clock struck twelve, Sansa stood up with a start.

"Oh dear. I'm going to be late for an appointment. Olenna, I know it's less than your usual rate, but do you think you could bring the price under the threshold I shared with you earlier."

"Oh yes. I'm charging that Lannister idiot a ridiculous amount to have the top floor to himself."

"I thought the building was rent-controlled?" Jon asked.

"Son, are you as deaf as I am? What part of 'I abhor the rule of law' did you not catch?" Jon chafed at the admonishment but stayed silent. "He may be the black sheep of the family, but Tyrion hasn't been cut loose from Daddy Lannister yet. The Imp can afford to subsidize my less moneyed tenants. If your moral code isn't too abused by the idea, the apartment is yours if you want it. Sansa, here love. Take the key and show them around."

"Oh. Okay." Sansa had a apparently resigned herself to missing her appointment, rising to take the key from the old woman's spotted hands.

"Thank you very much Olenna." Jon stood as well.

"That's Mrs. Tyrell to you, young man. You're young enough to be my grandson." Val smirked and even Sansa's lips quirked into a ghost of a smile and he sighed, taking the ribbing with aplomb.

"We'll take the apartment. Sansa, you don't need to miss your appointment." Val jumped in. "I don't need to see it to know that we want it. If you have a pen, I'll write you the deposit now."


	2. Chapter 2

She sensed the lockdown coming several weeks before the order finally came down from the Red Keep. She begged Harry to cancel his business trip, but he just ruffled her hair and continued packing.

"Don’t worry about it, babe. It's just another Southern Isles fever. That part of the world gets them all the time."

"But it's reached the Free Cities, Harry. They're warning it could be a pandemic." She bit at her thumb, scrolling through the global news headlines. Braavos had declared a national emergency, and whole cruise ships outside of Pentos and Myr had been quarantined. The island of Lys had closed their borders.

Harry walked by, shutting her laptop before dropping a pile of shirts into his suitcase, unceremoniously. "You spend too much time holed up in the apartment, reading social media conspiracies. You need some fresh air and some perspective. Get outside. Take a walk. Sign up for an art class or something." She glared up at him, before sliding off the bed to help him fold and pack. If she didn't, he'd wear wrinkled shirts every day.

"I wish you would stay home. You told me just last Friday that they don't even really need you there…that you could conference into the strategy meetings each day just as easily and save the company the expense of flying you out to Casterly Rock for a month." He gave her that gently patronizing look she hated, and she knew the real reason why he wouldn't push back against the trip. _She_ was going as well.

Sansa knew Harry was having an affair. He thought he was being discreet, and for the most part, he was, but she wasn't an idiot, and with them living in the same building as well as Harry and Val working together, it hadn't been that hard for Sansa to connect the dots. Did it bother her? Of course, but not as much as she supposed it should have. Mostly, she tried not to think about it, and when she did, it always seemed like something happening to another woman, not her. But again…mostly, she tried not to think about it. As long as she avoided the other injured party, Jon Snow, she was usually quite successful. Sansa didn't need a therapist to inform her that she had a large capacity for denial.

Now though, with a virus spreading from port to port, and the possibility of being stuck in the most populous city in Westeros, on her own, it did bother her that Harry would choose a few weeks of forbidden sex over his own wife. But what else could she say?

"If it does get bad…will you come home early?"

"Of course. I'm not a monster. But it's not going to come to that. Stop stressing. You know that it's not good for you." _Don't stress. It's bad for the baby. Relax. Don't stress. Meditate. Slow down. Exercise, but not too much. Stop drinking coffee. Take more folic acid. Eat fish, but only the right fish. Don't stress. Take a break from your career. Work on yourself. Don't stress. It's bad for the baby._ She followed all the advice, but none of it mattered. It didn't stop her from losing each baby, and it didn't stop her from losing Harry, either.

After he left, she turned out the lights and slid back into bed. She'd order groceries later.

**\---**

"Are you watching these numbers?"

"Hi, Sam. I'm well, thanks for asking. How are you and Gilly?"

"You should get out of the city."

"I know. The Kingsguard isn't even going to make it past the first round of the playoffs this year, but you know the life of an academic, Sam. King's Landing College chose me. I didn't choose it, that's for damn sure. I can't quit the city just because of a bad basketball team." Val rolled her eyes at him from across the island, and Jon turned away, walking into the bedroom.

"Jon, I'm talking about the pandemic, not sports." His friend's voice went up a little at the end and Jon sighed.

"I know, Sam. Just attempting a bit of levity, here."

"King's Landing is going to get hit hard. Five million people in, what, forty square miles? It's going to be a disaster."

"Sam, Val is getting on a plane in an hour, and I really can't talk right now."

"Jon-"

"Sam, I'm young and healthy and not a total idiot. I'm already taking precautions and I barely leave the apartment these days, as it is. I'll call you when I get back from dropping Val off, okay?"

"Jon-"

"Okay, take care, Sam!" Jon hung up, feeling only mildly guilty. He had been watching the numbers climb over the past week, but what was he supposed to do? It's not like he had anywhere better to go, and with Val leaving on that damn work trip, someone had to stay home to take care of Ghost and water the plants. When he walked back into the living room, she was already at the door with her suitcase.

"Do we need to leave already? I thought we might have time for a quick stroll through Chataya's Park with Ghost."

"Oh, you go ahead. I'm going to catch a cab, with Harry. You don't need to bother with getting the car. The traffic is horrible at this time of day, and you have a good parking spot for once." Her hair hid her face as she rummaged through her purse, and his chest tightened even though she was being perfectly reasonable. Val was always reasonable. He was the one constantly misreading the situation. Doubt slid off him.

"That makes sense, then. Have a good trip, love. Don't let them work you too hard." Jon was grateful Val had found a job so quickly after he'd transplanted them to King's Landing, but they weren't paying her _that_ much for all the hours she'd been working lately. Still, with his research spread across their tiny living space, her long hours were pretty convenient for him most of the time. The college had provided him an office, but with a fifty-minute train ride and two transfers paired with the fact that he was only teaching one class, it was way easier for him to work from their apartment. Now, he'd have a virtually uninterrupted month to wrangle his field notes and transcribe all of the interviews he'd conducted over the past few years in the far north, without Val nagging him to move his stuff from the table or stop sticking post-its to their walls.

"Jon?" Val gazed into his eyes as he stepped close, ready to kiss her goodbye.

"Yeah?" His head dipped lower, but she pulled back, maintaining eye contact.

"Keep an eye on Sansa, yeah?" He flinched, feeling a stab of guilt at Val's question.

"I mean, yeah. We're neighbors after all."

"Jon…Harry says she's having a hard time, after she lost the last one." Jon looked away, uncomfortable. He felt awful for Harry and Sansa, obviously. He wasn't ignorant to their fertility troubles. Still, he also felt inexplicably awkward every time he encountered Sansa Hardyng, so he maintained a civil distance. He always felt like a monster about it, because she was perfectly polite and friendly with him and they had a shared history. She was the one who found their apartment for gods' sakes, but that was part of the problem. Every time he looked at Sansa, properly looked at her, all he saw was Robb.

Robb Stark, his first college roommate and best friend; the boy who pulled Jon out of his shell of lonely misanthropy and dragged him home for holidays at Winterfell that were merry and loud and everything Jon's home life had never been. Robb Stark, who treated him like a brother and didn't mind when Jon attached himself like a barnacle to his father, Ned, who became Jon's mentor and the biggest advocate in him pursuing academia. Robb Stark, who died in a drone strike during the ill-fated northern rebellion a month after his father, while Jon was safe in the far north, conducting his first round of graduate research and learning all the ways a man and a woman could come together with his first girlfriend, Ygritte.

In the seven months that Jon had lived in King's Landing, one floor above Sansa, neither had mentioned Robb's name to the other, and as time barreled forward, Jon increasingly felt that the moment in which they could have moved from mere acquaintances to actual friends had passed. Yet, Val kept trying for force the relation anyway. With her fierce northern pride, she thought it was inevitable that the three of them would be close, a trio of northern solidarity in a sea of southern imperialists. She and Harry even got on well, working together at the same advertising firm and consistently cajoling their respective partners out for the occasional drink or dinner, especially in the early months of their residence. But then Sansa got pregnant again and spent more time at home, dealing with debilitating morning sickness and Jon and Val's jobs picked up and they settled into their own rhythm of city life and by the time Sansa miscarried, the bond wasn't strong enough to penetrate past her walled-off grief.

Now though, with Val's expectant stare pinning him down, he agreed to check in on Sansa while her husband was away.

"Make sure she gets outside once and awhile. Harry says she barely leaves the apartment anymore."

"Probably for the best, with a virus spreading." Jon joked, but Val pinched his arm. "Okay, I'll…I don't know. I'll ask her to go on a walk or something."

"Good. You need to get out of the apartment more too. It's eighty degrees and sunny every day and you're as pale as Ghost." Val gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and then she was out the door, before he could say another word.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no business committing to another story when I already have two in-progress, but I've been sitting on the prologue and first chapter of this for awhile and I felt like posting them. 
> 
> I recently re-watched one of my favorite films ever, In the Mood for Love and I just thought it would make the perfect Jon/Sansa AU. I'm also folding in the pandemic as a backdrop to force my various characters together and because, while I've been fortunate to weather it far from the city, I've also been feeling so isolated out in the country. I usually split my time between the rural area where I live and a much larger city where my husband and I went to school and where we are lucky to have a place to stay whenever we want. I miss the city so much and I suppose this is my ode to summers spent there when we had more time on our hands and could actually hang out with our friends.
> 
> Also - Fuck the police.


End file.
